05 February 2017

It failed to have the desired effect. . .

A bunch of 12-sided dice, much like the two bags of 25 each that arrived from Amazon earlier today.

Here's an item for wargamers, role-playing gamers, and, indeed, gamers of all stripes who have experience with multi-sided dice. Who knows? One day, anthropologists might just study the rituals and courtship practices of gamers, much like Jane Goodall's and Diane Fossey's work with the Chimpanzees and Gorillasof Central Africa. There's got to be a dissertation or monograph in it at the very least.

A package containing two bags of 25 twelve-sided dice each (for a total of 50 dice) was left on our front porch earlier today. I ordered these on Friday to use as a way of quickly generating random discussion groups among the students in some of my larger courses. Upon opening the box and confirming that the contents consisted of the expected items, I felt compelled to perform a spontaneous version of the Polyhedral Dice Erotic Courtship Dance right there in the kitchen for the Grand Duchess.

Sadly, my dance did not exactly have the effect on her I hoped for. Rather the opposite. Instead of leaping into my arms, she laughed for a solid two minutes and, once she caught her breath, told me to go back downstairs. Sigh. Something tells me that I might have better luck with Sparrows, Robins, or Grackles next spring.-- Stokes

P.S. The 50 twelve-sided dice are intended to help me randomly break my classes of 48-50 students up into discussion groups of three-five students quickly and easily. We've done the favorite colors, month of birth, favorite fruit, etc. already, and random group generation is a way to shake things up a bit and prevent cliques that invariably drift off task from forming. It was suggested by a visiting pedagogy expert who gave a very interesting talk here about a year ago.

LinkWithin

"Moin, moin en wellkomm na' Schtollen!"

Welcome to the fictitious land of shiny mid-18th century miniatures organized into LARGE units. I lay the blame for this madness squarely at the feet of hobby giants like Peter Gilder and Doug Mason, whose Napoleonics as seen in the hobby press of the times were a huge influence 35+ years ago. Much later, I stumbled upon Charge! Or How to Play War Games by Brigadier Peter Young and Colonel James Lawford. I was a certified goner by the time I purchased and read The War Game by Charles Grant, to see what all of the fuss was about, plus numerous more recent books and articles by one Brigadier (Ret.) C.S. Grant. Have a look around, leave a comment or two, and explore the blog thoroughly. You're sure to find all kinds of interesting and whimsical stuff here at the Grand Duchy of Stollen!